Case: 17-14749 Date Filed: 01/22/2019 Page: 1 of 12 [PUBLISH] IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT ________________________ No. 17-14749 Non-Argument Calendar ________________________ Agency No. A206-882-182 ELIDA A. FLORES-PANAMENO, CHRISTIAN ALEXANDER PANAMENO-FLORES, MADELINE BATSAVE PANAMENO-FLORES, Petitioners, versus U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL, Respondent. ________________________ Petition for Review of a Decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals ________________________ (January 22, 2019) Before MARCUS, ROSENBAUM, and BRANCH, Circuit Judges. BRANCH, Circuit Judge: Case: 17-14749 Date Filed: 01/22/2019 Page: 2 of 12 Elida Antonia Flores-Panameno petitions for review1 of the Board of Immigration Appeals’s (“BIA”) dismissal of her appeal. In short, Flores- Panameno asserts she received ineffective assistance of counsel because her former attorney misled her into accepting voluntary departure by telling her she would immediately be deported if she did not accept it. She filed a motion to reopen on that basis. The immigration judge (“IJ”) denied that motion. He found her acceptance of voluntary departure was truly voluntary, despite the ineffective assistance of counsel, because he had himself gone through what he deemed to be appropriate procedures at the departure hearing to ensure that was so. We lack a transcript of the hearing in question, hampering our ability to decide this petition. We conclude Flores-Panameno bore the burden of producing any such transcript. Because she did not produce a transcript, we find that we may rely on the IJ’s reconstruction of the record. In this case, however, the IJ’s reconstruction may be incomplete. Accordingly, we are unable to assess fully Flores-Panameno’s voluntariness. We therefore grant the petition and remand to the BIA to determine the full scope of the IJ’s inquiry into voluntariness, as set forth in more detail below. I. 1 Flores-Panameno is the lead petitioner. Her two minor children are derivative beneficiaries in these proceedings. For ease, we refer to her as the sole petitioner. 2 Case: 17-14749 Date Filed: 01/22/2019 Page: 3 of 12 A. On or about December 5, 2014, Flores-Panameno and her two minor children, natives of El Salvador, entered the United States. Two days later, Flores- Panameno was issued a Notice to Appear for being an alien in the United States without being admitted or paroled. After she retained counsel, who secured a transfer of venue to Atlanta and a continuance, a master calendar hearing was scheduled for February 11, 2016. The record does not expressly reveal what happened at the February hearing, although the events of that hearing remain relevant. The next thing we know is that, at the March 15, 2016, hearing, Flores-Panameno requested pre-conclusion voluntary departure and signed a declaration regarding non-coercion. The declaration required her to acknowledge (among other things) that she admitted to all charges/conceded to removability, that the only relief she sought was voluntary departure, that she was not coerced, and that she waived all rights to appeal. If Flores-Panameno filed a motion to reconsider, she acknowledged, the grant of voluntary departure would be terminated automatically and “the alternative order of removal [would] take effect immediately.” The ...
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